Destiny vs. Free Will Theme Analysis

Throughout Good Omens, Crowley and Aziraphale talk often about what they call the “Ineffable Plan”—that is, God’s plan for Earth. According to the Bible, this plan ends with Armageddon and the final fall of humanity. This fate seems inevitable, as divine beings like Crowley (a demon), Aziraphale (an angel), and Adam (the Antichrist) are supposedly bound by prophecy and have no choice but to follow the path that God has laid out. However, this simplistic way of looking at destiny doesn’t fully encompass how the world works—while destiny and free will might seem like opposing ideas that can’t coexist, the truth is actually far more complex. Good Omens suggests that prophecies are self-fulfilling—that is, someone’s belief in destiny is what makes that destiny come true. Furthermore, even in the face of terrifying prophecies, people can still make choices that change the future.

The novel casts destiny as an inevitable fact of life for all its characters. Within the world of the novel, Crowley and Aziraphale work on Earth for their employers (Hell and Heaven, respectively, which are described as being like governments or businesses). Their jobs largely consist of meddling in human affairs, pushing people toward good or evil. They’re supposed to continue until Armageddon, the final battle between Heaven and Hell, arrives. This is all part of the Ineffable Plan, and Crowley and Aziraphale don’t feel as though they can go against what they believe is predestined to happen. Thus, when they learn that the Antichrist has been sent to Earth and will bring about Armageddon after his 11th birthday, Crowley and Aziraphale feel stuck. Though Hell encourages rebellion in a general sense, it doesn’t encourage its own employees—like Crowley—to push back against its machinations. And similarly, if the Antichrist’s arrival is part of the Ineffable Plan, Aziraphale doesn’t feel like he has the power to do anything to stop it. Destiny, in this sense, initially constrains Crowley and Aziraphale and makes them feel powerless to try to stop Armageddon—which they believe is the right thing to do regardless of what the Ineffable Plan has to say on the matter.

However, although destiny seems inevitable, the novel also suggests that the particulars of any given prophecy are up for interpretation. For instance, Anathema Device and many of her ancestors have spent the last 300 years trying to deduce prophecies made by their 17th-century ancestor, the witch Agnes Nutter. Within the world of the novel, Agnes Nutter happens to be the only prophet in all of human history who ever made correct predictions. However, since Armageddon takes place in the late 20th century, and Agnes made her predictions in the 17th century, deciphering her thousands of prophecies is a difficult task. After all, Agnes was making her predictions long before things like cars and electricity were invented, so any of her prophecies concerning modern technology are nearly unintelligible. Thus, Anathema explains that it’s usually impossible to figure out what Agnes meant until after the prophecies come true; they only make sense in retrospect. This introduces one of the novel’s most important ideas concerning destiny: that it seems real and important simply because people believe in it. Agnes’s predictions seem to come true because Anathema’s family goes to the trouble of matching the predictions to world events—but if they didn’t, it’s possible that Agnes’s predictions could refer to any number of events.

Indeed, Good Omens ultimately proposes that free will and destiny are actually two sides of the same coin. Though Crowley and Aziraphale are initially paralyzed by the thought they’re powerless to save the world from Armageddon, they decide that they should try anyway. After all, as Crowley points out, Aziraphale is bound as an angel to thwart any evil plans he stumbles across—and the looming threat of Armageddon is nothing if not an evil plan. As Crowley and Aziraphale work together to keep Armageddon from happening, they justify their rebellion by reasoning that their actions are probably part of a much larger plan and not actually free will at all. The difference between destiny and free will is, in this sense, simply a matter of perspective. And later, at the moment when the 11-year-old Antichrist, Adam, is supposed to mobilize the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and bring about Armageddon, he refuses. Though various figures from Heaven and Hell insist that “it is written” that Adam must bring about Armageddon, Adam calmly says, “I don’t see why it matters what is written. Not when it’s about people. It can always be crossed out.” In support of this, Crowley and Aziraphale suggest that the course of events might be written differently elsewhere—and, for that matter, the very point of the Ineffable Plan is that it’s unknowable and subject to change at any minute. With this, Adam, Crowley, and Aziraphale propose that destiny isn’t set in stone. Destiny is whatever people make of it—and though it’s impossible to know for sure, it seems clear that people’s choices of what to believe are far more important and meaningful than destiny itself.